Robert J. Egley

Teacher-Principal Relationships: Exploring Linkages between Empowerment and Interpersonal Trust.

Purpose – To investigate relationships between teacher empowerment and interpersonal level trust in the principal.Design/methodology/approach – Trust is a fundamental element in well‐functioning organizations. Studies of empowerment, a motivational construct, have suggested that empowering employees is a key factor in managerial and organizational effectiveness. An instrument was constructed to measure perceived teacher empowerment and level of interpersonal trust in the principal. Established measures of psychological empowerment and affect‐and cognition‐based trust were adapted for use in the study. Elementary school teachers in an urban school district in the USA completed the survey instrument.Findings – Teachers who perceived that they were empowered in their work environments had higher levels of interpersonal trust in their principals. Teachers who found their work personally meaningful, and who reported significant autonomy and substantial influence in their work environments had higher levels of ...

Teacher team commitment, teamwork and trust: exploring associations

Purpose – To investigate relationships between teamwork, trust and teacher team commitment.Design/methodology/approach – Research has confirmed the value‐added effects of organizational commitment in terms of job performance, organizational effectiveness, and employee retention. This study focused on teacher teams as the unit of analysis, and posited associations between teamwork, viewed as team skills, trust and teacher team commitment. Data were derived from responses of elementary school teachers to an instrument including established measures of teamwork component skills, affective‐ and cognition‐based trust, and team commitment.Findings – Teamwork was found to be a significant predictor of teacher team commitment. Respondents showing higher levels of teamwork skills perceived higher levels of team commitment. Results, while not entirely confirmatory, suggested the importance of trust in the commitment equation.Research limitations/implications – This research was limited by the study sample of elemen...